Be My Friend
by DTs Rock On
Summary: A story about Lady, Vergil, and Nero in school.
1. Chapter 1

Vergil wasn't entirely sure about this school business. His dad had told him that it was important and that he'd learn stuff that would help him later on in life. He couldn't, however, see how playing with crayons and writing his name out a bunch of times, which was all he'd seemed to do for the first weeks of school, was going to help him. By the time they moved onto other stuff he was in the frame of mind that the rest of it was probably going to be useless as well.

It wasn't all bad, he supposed. Outside lessons where he got to run around were good, and he'd always liked lunch.

As he'd not made any particular friends, he sat on a table on his own at lunchtime. He wasn't alone for long though. He groaned as a gaggle of girls who apparently found him 'cute' sat down at his table. He didn't much like them, they seemed superficial and, he'd seen the other day when they'd picked on a short-haired girl who was in his class, capable of being very cruel. Vergil was never interested in women, though.

"Hi Vergy," they giggled as they settled themselves and unpacked lunch bags. The one sitting nearest him sort of curled round him in a gesture he didn't like. He thought that the way she had her hand around his arm was sick.

He shrugged out of the girl's grip and tried to concentrate on his lunch.

They were so loud and gesturing so obviously he couldn't help but notice they were gossiping about the short-haired girl. She'd come into the lunch room and was, as far as Vergil could see, trying to hide from all the other students. She looked scared.

"Who is she?" he asked the girl sitting next to him.

"Who? Her?" the girl pointed so violently and spoke so loudly that the short-haired girl visibly flinched in fear and tried even harder to make herself more hidden in the corner than she already was.

Vergil felt sorry for her. She looked terrified and as far as he knew she'd done nothing wrong. Maybe the cat-like girl knew a reason why she was to being treated the way she was.

"She's Lady, the 'dumb' one," the girl said in an 'airs and graces' tone.

"She's USELESS at sports" another girl said. "Did you see her yesterday? Kept falling over her own feet!"

"And just look at her! I mean there's no school uniform here, she can wear whatever she likes, but she chooses to wear that dowdy outfit!" another scoffed.

Vergil thought the outfit looked rather nice, it suited her and was much nicer than the flashy, horrid clothes the girls at his table were wearing. He was getting more and more annoyed at the girls. Apparently there was no good reason for them to act that way towards Lady, and they'd clearly terrified the girl. He tried to stomp on the idea of stabbing them all with his Yamato.

He got up as they were still talking about completely stupid reasons to put the girl down.

"Where are you going?" one of them asked when she noticed Vergil was gathering up his stuff.

"I'm going to go and sit with Lady if she'll let me," he said.

"You're WHAT?!" they shrieked. Vergil just rolled his gray eyes and walked over to the table in the corner of the room.

"Excuse me," he smiled when he got there. Lady jumped like she'd been stung by a wasp and whimpered quietly, obviously assuming she was in for more torture.

"S'alright, I don't mean you any harm. Mind if I come and sit here?" he gestured to an empty seat at her table. Lady nodded slowly, still looking a bit weary.

Vergil plonked himself down in the chair and resumed eating his lunch. He noticed Lady had been doodling pictures of cats on a scrap of paper next to her lunch.

"You like cats?" he asked.

Lady nodded nervously.

"You should see my neighbor's black cat. He's huuuuuuuuuge!" Vergil gestured.

Lady's red-and-blue eyes widened and she whispered back "really?" in a quiet and shy but excited tone.

"Yeah!" Vergil nodded. "I'm Vergil, Vergil Sparda, by the way."

"Lady Ann" she said quietly.

"Nice to meet you!" he beamed at her. She nodded, seeming a little less shy.

"Ugh, I hate these," he held up some small pieces of fruit and stuck his tongue out. "You like?" he asked. Lady nodded.

"Help yourself," he smiled, pushing the container they were in to her side of the table. Then he attacked a sandwhich.

He looked up as he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. Lady was pushing some chocolate from her lunch towards him.

"Please, help yourself, I'm not that hungry" she said so quietly he could barely hear her.

"Thanks," he grinned, taking a piece. "I love chocolate."

Lady smiled, clearly delighted, and took a piece of fruit.

The rest of lunch passed quietly, they didn't have much time to eat today.

When the bell rang to signify the end of lunch, Lady leapt up and dashed away to the classroom. Vergil guessed she was scared of running into the mean girls. He frowned, it wasn't fair.

He headed to class and half fell asleep as the teacher droned on about something that didn't hold his interest.

He was jolted out of a daydream when a piece of paper landed on his desk. He looked up, and saw Lady quickly turning back to face the front. She'd been the one who passed him the note then.

"Sorry" was scribbled on it in neat handwriting. He tore a sheet of paper from his notebook and quickly wrote "what for?" on it before folding up the note and leaning forward to drop it on her desk when the teacher turned around to write something on the chalkboard.

It was a while before the teacher turned around again after that, but when she did, a piece of paper flew onto Vergil's desk. He unfolded it.

"Those girls are probably mad and won't talk to you again after you sat next to me at lunch," it said.

Vergil wrote a reply and, the next time the teacher turned around he not only put the note on Lady's desk but, impulsively, also jumped forward to sit on the bench next to Lady. He plopped his stuff on the desk as quietly as possible and pulled his bag from under the bench behind him to the new one by catching the handle with his foot and dragging it.

When the teacher turned to face the class again, she noticed something was different, but when Vergil flashed his best 'Who? Me?' grin she just rolled her eyes, sighed in the way that only old people can when they're exasperated about young people, and returned to teaching the lesson.

Lady passed his note back to him. Under his scribble saying "I don't care, I don't like them. They're horrid!" she'd drawn a cute smiley face and a little cat. Vergil smiled at her, and then tried his best to pay attention to the lesson. If his dad said it was important, he guessed it must be, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why knowing little rhymes about which harvests had been in which year would ever come in useful.


	2. Chapter 2

Vergil was very very angry. He was trying to explain to a teacher who didn't seem interested in listening that he hadn't started a fight and that neither he nor Lady should get the blame for it.

After the day when they'd shared lunch together Vergil and Lady had become close friends. Vergil had been pleased to see that when he was around the bullies left Lady alone. And Vergil was around a lot, where you found Lady you found Vergil more often than not. None of the bullies was brave enough to try and start a fight with Lady when they knew Vergil would step in to protect her.

However, one day, one of the girls who had sat next to Vergil at lunch before he'd spent his lunchtimes with Lady had gotten jealous. She was used to always getting what she wanted, being a spoiled brat, and didn't like seeing the girl she perceived as being the geeky little drab klutz hanging around with Vergil.

So she'd gone to see one of the older boys whom she could wrap around her little finger with a bit of eyelash fluttering and cute posing and suggested something to him.

He'd gone away from the conversation believing that if he turned Lady back into the scared little mouse she'd once been he'd get a date with the brat girl. She had no intention of holding up her end of the bargain of course, but he didn't know that.

Lady and Vergil had decided to have lunch outside that day as the weather was nice. Lady was sitting in a spot of shade under a tree, watching a butterfly flutter lazily past and waiting for Vergil to return from the main school building when a large shadow loomed over her. She looked up just as the great hulk of a boy had kicked a bunch of dirt at her.

Vergil walked out of the school building and turned to where he and Lady had been sitting and saw a circle of students, which usually signified a fight. He frantically looked around for Lady and got a horrid sinking feeling in his gut when he couldn't see her. She hated fights, and stayed as far away from them as she could when they broke out in the school yard. The fact that he couldn't see her could only mean one thing.

He leapt into the crowd and pushed and shoved his way through. When he got close to the centre he began to yell "leave her alone!"

The students around him sensed that his presence would make the fight more interesting, and they moved to let him through.

He was furious when he saw what was happening at the centre of the clump of students. A large boy was kicking Lady, who was curled up in a small ball, whimpering in pain and, from the looks of it, barely conscious.

"LEAVE HER ALONE!" Vergil screamed furiously at the boy. The bully landed one last kick on Lady before turning around slowly to face Vergil, who felt sick as he saw Lady's small form crumple. She'd totally lost consciousness it seemed.

"Whadda ya want?" the boy drawled.

"What the DEVIL TRIGGERS did you do that for?" Vergil screamed. The boy didn't answer with words, he simply spat at Lady's small, limp body.

Vergil yelled a blood-curdling war cry, unsheathed his Force Edge and proceeded to swipe at the bully with it. He actually had no intention of fighting the boy while Lady was in her current state. He simply wanted the boy to leave for now, so that he could get Lady inside and get her some medical attention.

The boy, however, was in a mood for a fight.

He threw a punch at Vergil which the dark slayer dodged with ease. This angered the bully and he continued to strike out at Vergil more and more wildly and Vergil kept dodging.

Suddenly Vergil felt himself being lifted off the ground by someone who'd grabbed the back of his shirt. He sheathed the sword he'd been holding and concentrated on trying not to get chocked. As he was swung around to face whoever had picked him up he vaguely noticed the crowd seemed to have dispersed and the bully was making a run for it.

Vergil sighed with relief when he saw it was a teacher.

"Lady!" he pointed at her as the teacher put him down.

"I'm very disappointed with you, Vergil Sparda," the teacher said as he lifted Lady up and slung her over his shoulder.

It took Vergil a few moments to realize the meaning of the words as he was busy rubbing his sore neck and feeling sick with worry for Lady who looked like a little rag doll when she was thrown over the teacher's shoulder.

A bleeding rag doll he noticed, wincing in sympathy at a particularly nasty looking wound.

"My office, NOW!" the teacher yelled.

"Hey! Wait! This isn't my fault! I didn't start this!" Vergil said as he walked towards the school building. But his pleas fell on deaf ears.

It had taken ages for the teacher to finally listen properly and decide to let Vergil go with a warning not to fight again and a couple of days detention.

Vergil didn't care about what he would normally have considered an unfair punishment, he just wanted to make sure Lady was OK.

He skidded into the medical room, his boots squeaking loudly on the floor.

"Don't disturb her," the nurse said glaring at Vergil before she left to attend to something elsewhere.

He pulled up a chair next to the bed Lady was laid out on and grabbed hold of one of her hands. She was still unconscious, and she looked smaller than usual in the plain white bed.

Vergil ignored the bell signifying the end of lunch and the start of the next lesson, there was no way he could concentrate with Lady like this.

He wasn't sure how much time passed, but he was greatly relieved when Lady finally began to wake up.

She uttered a swear word Vergil didn't know she knew.

"What happened?" she asked groggily. Vergil leapt up from the chair and hugged her, being careful to be gentle and not to hit any of the nasty looking bruises that were appearing on her.

"Some sod beat you up" he said angrily, too enraged to care about his language. The short-haired woman swore again, and Vergil hoped that he wasn't being a bad influence on her language.

"I assume they didn't catch who it was?" she asked. Vergil sadly shook his head.

"Decided they'd give me a couple of detentions though," he sighed.

"Oh Vergil," Lady frowned and hugged him.

"I don't get it, if you're the one who saved the world from demons and everything why don't the teachers do more to protect you?" Vergil asked.

"Exactly that," Lady answered, and received a puzzled look from Vergil.

"It's because I'm the one they let it happen, they figure it's good for me because it'll help prepare me for the my duty of preventing filthy scums like my father," Lady sighed heavily. "Sometimes I wish I was just an ordinary, no, that's selfish," she frowned.

"Harsh!" a small voice sounded from across the room. Vergil and Lady both jumped, neither had known anyone else was in the room.

"That's really bad you have to put up with that," the owner of the voice, a silver haired man, strolled across the room to Lady's bed. He nodded at them.

"I'm Nero. I'll be coming to school here soon," he said. A look of recognition crossed Lady's face.

"Nero?" she asked. The knight nodded.

"So," Nero said, hopping up onto the end of Lady's bed. "What's it like here?"

"Well for one thing you'll be wanting to bring your own lunch," Vergil said. "The cafeteria food here's AWFUL!"


End file.
